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I'm the owner of this laptop (thanks to Dell's Holiday contest :D ) and can definately attest to the speed of this laptop.

There were a couple people asking about battery life, though. In this, the Dell seems to fail.
Now, I've never owned a laptop before, so I can't really compare, but the battery is VERY quick to run out. Even just running windows media and surfing the web wirelessly, it sucks through the battery in less than two hours (down to 5%). Without wireless enabled, it lasts about an hour more (give or take).

It plays all the games I have (NFS U2, GTA SA, couple others) at GREAT framerates, with all the goodies turned on, resolution turned WAY up (19something x something).

The big hit, though, as seen in the tests, comes with anti aliasing. The games become almost unplayable with AA on at higher resolutions, and a bit dissapointing at lower resolutions (still playable, though).

The other thing I saw questioned was the heat. During intense, long term gaming (NFS U2 being the test dog here), the lower area (keyboard, mouse pad, wrist resting areas) are damn near cold. Room temp at worst.
Up near the screen, things get REAL hot, as well as around the GPU and processor fans. It seems the keyboard vents are almost useless at drawing out heat, as I can hardly ever feel air coming out of them.

If you guys want anymore information on the laptop, I'll have it for a while. I also have a much weaker desktop that I can compare to if need be, though it only has an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 (horrible card by todays standards).

Whoa... But yes, there's so many variables, it's nothing more really then saying "this laptop is fast".

Now what bothers me is those heat numbers... There's just noooo way Nvidia got it so low... Think about it... It's like what? 120W+ for a desktop 6800 Ultra? They'd have to lower the fab, or gotten really lucky with a batch... Me thinks Nvidia used some type of reference formula, such as "for every "xx" hours of gaming, "xx" hours will be in low power mode.

The Pent M doesn't have much of a heat problem, nor as much of a performance delta compared to the AMD solutions in the mobile arena. I think Dell going with that chip instead of the P4 was a good idea.

Maybe NVIDIA will finally gain some ground in the notebook sector... Hopefully we'll see AMD in the DTR field soon, because these big-time manufacturers like Dell are having heat problems, and voila, AMD runs cooler, faster, better.

Now when they put Yonah into this machine, it'll be time to own one :) Thanks much was great to see the review. I for one am about ready for a DTR notebook pc - and so this was a good article to see. Right direction for Nvidia too.

Side note: Quite a few articles show the P-M coming out quite well in gaming as you ramp the clockspeed up. Might be nice to see one of these machines with 1-2gb of good low latency DDR2 but hard to say if that would change things much.

Yonah, with SSE improvements and a clockspeed boost should be the machine to get. 6800 GO ultra is quite the beast and the right kinds of improvements. Now if they drop that to 65nm and bring a bit more speed and lower power useage and it will be a monster :)

A comparison is not quite possible given all the variables involved, so though the Go 6800U may be fast, we can't really say much about it versus ATI's current X800 mobile offerings until there's a test with identical specs -- the best case being a modular setup to accept either option.Reply

Regardless of specs, that thing would still cost nearly twice as much as my top of the line SFF and you'd sacrifice on hard drive space/speeds. There's just no point to a gaming laptop *shrug*. At least those specs are finally starting getting me to look at them! Now if only the price would come down about a grand...Reply

I have to agree with #22, I am an owner of a Dell XPS system with mobiliy 9800. Until now, the 9800 (Really X800 based) is the fastest available mobile solution and it would have been nice to see some comparisons with the 9800. (Didn't AT do some benches on the 9800??)

I still have no idea how my system compares with this new graphic option.

#26, if you've seen the review that anandtech did on desktop use of the dothan core, you would know that it is actually pretty weak when it comes to gaming. It still uses the exectution core of the PIII, etc. Pairing it with DDR2 seems to break the bandwidth issue.

Packing that much performance in to a >10lbs package is simply amazing. That machine pwns my A64. when I win the lottery I just might have to pick one up...Reply

Why does does this review leave the impression that the Pentium M 2.13Ghz is weak?
From benchmarks I've seen here and there, it's actually out there with the top lot in performance, sometimes beating the most powerful Pentium 4 EE!Reply

First off...you could have put the previous M28 benchies with this article from November along with the original GeForce 6800 Go. Looks like this new nVidia card might be competitive. If I were nVidia, I would have been worried after the November article. Second, I would like to see the Star Wars and BattleField: Vietnam benchies. It looks to be the one that shows ATI dominating.

Dissapointing review...if i want a Gaming Laptop I want a review to compare it to other Gaming Latop's. Comparing it to desktops sure doesnt answer any questions of mine!! I think you missed the boat.Reply

#18, I doubt they much choice - they had to use whatever drivers came with the laptop 9and those would obviously be optimized for the new moobile GPU). It would be interesting to see if the drivers help out desktop cpu's, though.Reply

I could be wrong, but I'd bet the picture would look a little different if all the cards were using the same drivers. The difference between 69.xx and 75.xx drivers for recent dx9 games could be significant. Reply

Its a shame Dell didnt give more time with the system, it would have been really interesting to probe the Alviso platform in all of its glory and compare against current systems... especially in the arena of the DDR2.Reply

If the max output is 65W assuming you have the laptop loaded 100% the entire time the standard battery (what is it? 70W/h?) would barely last an hour. Just... ok... I imagine you can get beffier batteries or use a second one.Reply

If we assume that Pentium M takes about 25W, this would leave 40W for system memory, chipset, hard drive, GPU and graphic memory. Wow, nVidia managed to pull miracle here. Gone are the days of 100W power consumption for high end Geforce 6800 cards.Reply

If im not mistaken, the only difference between the GT and Ultra are their clock speeds #7. These benchmarks are baffling. I'm having a hard time believing them. How on earth did they pull it out?

Is this a prelude to what's to in the next generation of desk top cards? I'm think, if they can make a mobile card this fast, they should surely make a faster desk top counterpart with less heat, space, and power restraints.Reply

Odd how a 12pipe / 5 vs @ 450mhz can out pace a desktop 16pipe 6vs @425. What optimisations have been done? I can understand it beating a 6800gt due to greater vertex/pixel shading power (450 x 5 vs 350 x 6) but it shouldnt beat an ultra.

Is the nv41m on 0.13 or 0.11um ? the die seems quite large any idea on transistor count?Reply